The Dartboard of Discards
by Stephen Ratliff
Summary: Tossed up into the dartboard: Some discarded Ritually Yours scenes
1. Worst School Best Results

_**Author's Note:**__ The following is a short that I'm tossing out. For a while I considered this as a possible start to a particular story, but after due consideration, went another way. Looking at the discarded scene file, afterwards, though, I thought it was something I had to share. It is not a complete story. Consider this the start of a collection of tossed out scenes and scene fragments that just didn't fit when I was writing something else. There are a couple more short scenes of the like that I might toss out with this one. Originally I posted this with the first fragment's title, but I've decided that my original description of what this is the best. This is the Dartboard of Discards  
_

**Worst School Best Results**

"It's a travesty, I tell you, Griselda," an old man with a gray streaked brown beard said from his portrait. "Hogwarts employs some of the worst teachers, and is by far the worst boarding school in all of Europe, if not the world, yet somehow manages to keep turning out the results. Snape has to be the worst Potions professor I've ever had the displeasure of observing, yet somehow his NEWT class turned out two thirds Outstandings, and the highest amount of them adjusted to student body ever, this year."

"Oh Soterios, it can't be that bad," Griselda said, looking up from where she was taking her tea. It was a special blend that she had recently discovered during a rare foray into the muggle world. It was a shame that so many of those bookstores had gone to add coffee shops instead of good old fashion tea. "Snape was taught by Professor Slughorn, and he was quite the professor."

"Snape is nothing like Slughorn," Soterios said. "I've been watching both since they started their careers at Hogwarts. Slughorn was always a bit cloying, but Snape lives up to his first name instead. In one would I'd describe his teaching methods as severe. He rarely explains himself. Quite often his classes are little better than lab watched over by an overseer with a tongue that is a sharp verbal replacement for a whip.

"It was just past December that I witnessed him berate a first year for his potion being just barely past ripe when he added the lacewings. The poor girl was in tears. Judging from the tests, the potion may have actually turned out better than usual, not that the Gryffindor will ever find out!

"That man also has a regrettable tendency to favor his own house in the worst of fashions. The worst part of it comes with his public fawning of his Slytherins. I've yet to see him say that they've done anything wrong, sort of when they manage to blow up the lab. And Merlin help any Gryffindor. They won't get any assistance from him."

"That's strange. Last year the entire Gryffindor class got Outstandings on their NEWTs," Griselda remarked.

"Well, it was certainly not due to Snape!"


	2. Early Ritually Yours scenes

DartboardOfDiscards02

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_**Author's Note:**__ With _Ritually Yours_ wrapping up, I thought I'd toss a few discards from the early work on the story. Some of these scenes were tossed early, with very little proofing. Some got a bit more work, and almost made it into the story. All of these were written before the posting of the first part._

**First Scene Written: Nine and Three Quarters**

_This scene won't be used, but it was the scene that started me thinking on the story. It was written in sort of a free write period where I basically wrote down any scene that came to my mind._

Hermione pulled out her wand. "Episkey," she ordered, and Harry's bloody noise stopped bleeding. Her father had punched him right after he had helped her off the Hogwarts Express "You deserved that, you know."

"Hey! It's not my fault!" Harry replied, as Hermione wiped the blood off his face. "Would you rather I hadn't rescued you?"

"It's not the rescue I have problem with, it's what came after," Hermione said, as Harry stood back up. "Not that we even had the fun that normally causes this."

"I know, I know, we're both still virgins," Harry said, helping the seven months pregnant first year up. "At least I didn't rescue you from a dragon in a ritual circle. Then you be having triplets."

"There is that," Hermione said, looking over at her parents. "I think Mum's done lecturing Dad. Let's go home."

Harry took her Hermione's hand as they walked out of King's Cross Station. His first year had been hard. He'd defeated a troll, made Hermione his concubine, played Quidditch, and stopped Voldemort from getting the Philosopher's Stone. He'd spent way too much time in the Hospital Wing. Worst of all, Dumbledore had told him why Voldemort was after him. It scared him. However, at least two good things had come out of it, Hermione and he no longer had to live with the Dursley's.

Though, he hoped that Mr. Granger's punch got out all of his frustration with Harry having gotten his little girl pregnant

**You Stole Her Towel**...

_This scene was written while I considered how Hermione living in the same dorm as the boys might work. I eventually decided that I needed to work on some restrictions, and this scene found it's way into the bit bucket as a bit too much to fit under the structure I built afterwards. There a few other things I changed that are present in this early draft as well._

Harry Potter was not sure about how things were going to go with Hermione. It had been a couple days since she had been moved into the wardrobe and became his concubine after Madame Pomfrey discovered that Hermione had become pregnant due to what they were both calling the damned ritual circle. He was sure about one thing though. His roommates were going to regret stealing her towels.

"Who stole my bath towel?" Hermione said from the bathroom door. She was completely naked. Her hair was dripping wet, slicked down instead of it's usual nimbus of curls. She held her wash cloth to cover her crotch, but her pert breasts were open to all the boys' visions. Of course, since her other had held her wand, whose tip was already glowing red, that wasn't possible.

Harry gulped at his concubine's display of anger. He quickly retrieved his own towel and tossed it to Hermione. She dropped the wash cloth in order to catch the towel. "Thanks Harry," she said. "Now find mine before I come back."

"Now which of you jokers stole Hermione's towel?" Harry said. He first looked at Ron, as he was the closest, sitting on his bed. "You know that she doesn't want you staring at her."

Ron caught Harry's gaze. "Don't look at me. I'm not that curious about what a girl looks like. Hermione's scary, brilliant, but scary. Plus Ginny doesn't wear anything during the summer."

"Seamus?" Harry asked turning to the next boy.

"It's like Ron said, she's scary man," Seamus replied. "Not sure I have the courage. Especially after she threatened us with disembowelment that first morning."

"Dean?" Harry said, turning to the next boy, who appeared to be furiously sketching, while sitting at the foot of Neville's bed.

"Hold a moment, I've got to finish this," Dean said.

"Dean, did you steal Hermione's towel so you could sketch her nude?" Harry asked.

Dean looked up having finished his sketch. "Ah, yes," he admitted.

"She's going to kill you," Neville said, from his position at the head of his bed. "Where did you put the towels?"

"Under my pile," Dean admitted.

Harry got up off of his bed and retrieved the towels. "I don't know what she's going to do to you, Dean. I'm probably not going to stop it either." He detoured briefly to Hermione's wardrobe room, and picked up her slip. "And Neville, I know you were in on it."

"It was his idea!" Dean said.

"All I said was that most artists do nude sketches," Neville said as Harry reached the bathroom door.

Hermione met Harry at the door, Harry's towel around her. "Thanks Harry," she said. "Dean, I want to see that sketch." She took her slip off the top of the towel stack and shut the door again.

"I am so doomed," Dean said, looking down at the picture.

"Yes, let's see how doomed," Hermione said, coming back out of the bathroom. She wore only her slip, which went down far enough, Harry judged, not to be too much of a problem. It was cream colored, and in the light of the dorm, at times, he'd not been able to judge where it started. She seemed to float over to where Dean was seated and pick up the sketch book. She turned it this way and that. "Actually, it's not that bad. Quite good. Still, you should have asked, so ..."

Harry didn't hear the spell that Hermione uttered, but he saw the effects. Dean's clothes melted off his body to the floor. Dean's hands immediately went to cover himself. Hermione had an expression that Harry had never seen on her. She was smirking. "Hermione, that's enough," Harry ordered.

"He'll have to put it back on," Hermione said, looking down. "Disappointing. Oh well." She yawned. "Bedtime, I think. Don't stay up too late studying for the transfiguration test tomorrow, boys."

"Guys, if any of you try anything like that again," Harry said as soon as the wardrobe door closed behind his sleepy concubine, "I'll have her do the spell on all of you, in the Great Hall. Understood?"


End file.
